Tagged: feedback

If you’ve recently received feedback on your writing, e.g., after attending a writers’ conference or sharing with your writing group or getting a manuscript critique, here aresome broad suggestions towards working out what to do next.

* First, check your ego at the door. You will collect it later, but for now be open to suggestion. Disavow yourself of attachment. What you shared with readers was just a draft anyway – wasn’t it? You might also have been looking for validation (or even a book deal) – which is fine. But if this is a moving and fluid process leading to a desired outcome (that deal), you might need more than strokes to the ego. Patience and some crafty application are probably what will count most. Be reflective, be contemplative.

* Ideally, feedback won’t be too prescriptive, particularly at early stages, and it should not be regarded as such.

* Some feedback will make sense right away, some might suggest alternatives, some will not really work. Some might suggest the reader doesn’t get you or your vision, in which case: also ask yourself if you need to be clearer, or maybe find other readers.

* Some feedback might be contradictory, even from the same person. Good feedback often is. Tussling with the contradictions can force you to go deeper to really figure out what needs to be done. Embrace the idea of negative capability, and even revel in the contradictions. In many ways, after all, contradictions are simply different choices. Which will you take? Be decisive. Or be experimental with different decisions, at least for a while.

* Maybe avoid thinking in terms of agreement or disagreement with feedback. In some ways, agreement and disagreement are irrelevant. The ideas of right and wrong don’t really apply in creative writing; you’re not writing a technical manual (and clear-cut ideas of right and wrong don’t always apply even there). Instead, simply listen, then hold everything that seems relevant in suspension (maybe along with some of the stuff that seems irrelevant), and then act upon it through revising and drafting to take the work where it needs to go.

(I admit I sometimes get irritated when writers tell me they ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with what I say – and not just because I am NEVER wrong! But it can suggest we’ve been talking at cross purposes. I’m delighted if writers ‘disagree’ 100% with things I raise but are then prompted to act on their writing in ways that make it stronger. The suggestions I make are not meant as hard and fast ideas waiting for acceptance, but intended as ideas for thinking about. Feedback is often about exploring departure points for future drafts, and sometimes it’s good for a reader to get provocative suggestions or comments, which can often spur. Sometimes writers need to be challenged. Or: writing needs a challenge. There is too much undercooked writing out there. Come on, we can do better! So the idea of disagreement/agreement seems moot at this stage, or premature. Or simply not really relevant.)

* Be systematic. Create a system – not least as it will take your ego and neuroses out of consideration.

* E.g., lay out on a table in different piles each piece of feedback, whether these are edited scripts you go through comparing them page by page, or a memo from a book doctor, or emails from beta readers you’ve printed out, or Post-its on which you jotted notes and impressions given verbally by readers. You’ll start to ground all of these words of feedback in something tangible; for some weird reason, I think that interacting with things physically makes a difference. It steps you out of yourself, and if you do a lot of your writing on screen it can lead you out of that locked-in work of constant scrolling through a document.

* E.g., you’re a writer, so do what writers do: write. Write yourself a memo or an editorial letter in which you synthesise all the feedback you have received, perhaps summarising different takes with a paragraph each.

* Or write lists of pros and cons.

* Or write yourself a manifesto or a mission statement that brings focus and clarity to what you are trying to do with and for this piece of writing. Maybe rewrite this – or write several manifestos – as you go through different drafts: give your project freedom to evolve. Maybe write a manifesto for yourself as a writer, too.

* A manifesto can help clarify your intention, which is often at the start of a project quite amorphous. Keep coming back to your intention. You may be able to integrate different responses while remaining true to your vision. Your intention might also grow or move on.

* Separate matters of technique from matters of taste. Matters such as uneven pacing or awkward transitions or clunky syntax or a lack of sentence variety are often things that could/should be fixed. Matters such as excessive adverbs (or some of the above, such as sentence variety) could be changed, but they might also be matters of style (a few adverbs are fine and even essential, else why else would the Goddess have invented them?). I guess the important thing is: don’t be careless.

* If several readers question the same thing, this could be something that requires a fix. Or it could be something that presses buttons. In which case, maybe fix it, or do something to press those buttons even more strongly, or more effectively.

* Be open to experiment. Do try things out free of attachment. E.g., you might not end up using first-person, but it could be worth trying if a couple of readers have asked if you’d thought about using it; just travelling in a character’s first-person narration for a few pages might give you new insights into the world of your book.

* Draw up a checklist of things to do. Things you can do, things you must do, things that you need to think about for a little while.

* Separate these checklists into rounds of edits, then go back into the text and start revising, rewriting, redrafting. Expect further feedback on future drafts, and possibly seek out fresh readers. (The matter of revising is another post, or set of posts.)

* Consider who is giving the feedback. An agent, an editor, a book doctor, a teacher, a beta reader, a writer, a general reader, a member of your writing group, a friend or loved one: each will have a different relationship with you and with writing and reading, and might have different expectations or priorities. (This covers a broad subject, and might be another post too.)

* Ask questions of your readers. In some contexts, this is not possible (in which case, maybe you can make it possible?). And it is possible for discussion to get too circular or unfocused. So make any questioning pointed and specific (as, ideally, feedback should be too). It can often, in fact, be good to raise questions in a note or two when you hand over work for feedback, though too it is often good to solicit views cold (yet another post).

* Tame your monkey mind. Understand that going through feedback can invite all sorts of doubts and chatter, and feed all sorts of anxieties and neuroses. Calm down. Some meditation or mindfulness techniques can help. Or just take the dog for a walk or bake a cake or do some work in the garden.

* Be patient, mostly with yourself. Writing a book takes a long time, and sometimes takes many drafts.

* Give yourself some time and space, too. A pause. Maybe put the writing to one side for a while. Understand the value of emptiness; when you stop thinking about something, your instinct can develop. Ironically (as it’s good not to be too outcome-oriented at this stage), taking some time away can eventually make the task ahead easier, once you return to it. You’ll be surer of what needs to happen.

* A pause in the writing can in fact be a good time to go away and do the other work of a writer.

* E.g., reading. Read widely and deeply in your own genre as well as others. Read this year’s bestsellers, but also read the classics, with a view to understanding how your book might sit beside them. And this is not just about reading for pleasure or reading for your book group or reading because you like an author. This is about reading as a writer, and reading to learn what writing can do and what you can do as a writer. Most every book that has been published can teach you something: aspects of craft, style, conventions, taste. And why did an editor choose to publish this book?

* E.g., identify gaps in your knowledge or obvious areas of improvement, and maybe in the mid- or long-term embark on some self-improvement. Read some books on writing, or take a course, or simply carry out some writing exercises to help with things that could be stronger.

* Sometimes, too, rewrites come quickly. Have confidence in them. Spontaneous writing for a project, even if it is later on edited, often taps into something vital. Follow those tangential thoughts, play around with things at the edges, stop all the clocks to do the rewrite commanded by that brainwave you just enjoyed.

* Know when to stop. At least for now. Revising and editing can go on forever. But …

* Keep writing. Maybe not all of your next books at once, but make some plans for one of them, and be starting work on that. Sometimes a project is put to one side for now, or till later. Sometimes, first major projects are overly ambitious, and it might make sense to work something more manageable in the meantime. If you are writing a novel, that might include, for example, practising the art of fiction by writing short stories.

* Importantly, don’t be harsh on yourself (which you shouldn’t be if you checked your ego at the door!). Try to be as clear-sighted as possible, using that clarity of vision to stop you from feeling wounded or offended by what you hear. Or excessively pumped up: praise can be as harmful as criticism, sometimes.

* More than anything: Listen.

If you have other suggestions or things to say about feedback, do raise in a comment below, and if I have anything to add I can try to follow up on that. In future posts I intend to address more specific aspects of revising and self-editing, and discuss related matters such as ways to solicit feedback, setting up a writing group, and readying your work for submission or publishing.

Postscript
Links to another post and articles that consider the idea of feedback in other ways: